


Bring on the Rain

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: Flipping Coins [15]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Fog Warriors, Gen, Pre-Dragon Age II, Rain, Seheron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4344188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danarius had hated the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring on the Rain

Danarius had hated the rain. Any hint of wet in the air had meant that the magister would stay in his grand villa, finding other pursuits than he’d arranged. 

Fenris had never learned why, it had never crossed his broken mind to wonder.

He only recalled watching it from the upper floors inside thick glazing on massive doors that were only closed to shut out the driving winter rain.

The first time he’d stood in rain, stood in rain and _remembered _it, had been on Seheron. The unnatural fog that the warriors were named for replaced by the natural damp that was pervasive in the jungle. Those low clouds that never seemed to disperse had one day thickened so that even the hearty folk he’d found himself among chose to remain indoors around the small fires that were mostly for the atmosphere and to toast bits of root and meat on the rare, indolent day.__

__But he’d been drawn to the open door of the sheltering hut._ _

__Air so thick he could feel it on his skin, feel it clinging to the inside of his nostrils. Warm. Soft as the stroke of a flannel cloth over a blade. He’d ignored a laughing imploring to come back inside, to listen to the fog dancer’s story, to rejoin the circle. Instead, he'd crept to the hut’s broad porch._ _

__The dark grey of the sky visible in snatches through the trees seemed to somehow illuminate the greens of the jungle. The broad leaves of towering trees glistened and dripped in slower counterbeat to the pattering of falling water._ _

__He’d stepped into mud before he realized he’d left the porch, thick and silty and felt it climb and cling to the side of his feet, between his toes and lifted his foot to watch it washed clean. The gleam of lyrium lines reappearing made him step down, to see the soft brown cover it all again._ _

__It took minutes before the rain penetrated the thick hair braided that morning for him by his host’s daughter, and he was surprised to find the water warm, too, as it streamed down his skull and into his eyes. He closed them and listened to the fall; like a hundred drums, breathing the green, silky, heavy air before he opened them again and watched it drip from his eyelashes._ _

__Water was pooling on the edges of the collection of clearings that made up the camp in silver-olive depressions. Puddles and the _idea _of them tickled down the dark corner of his mind as if something was there he should remember. Fenris shied away from it, though and opened his mouth instead.___ _

____Bitter from the paint one of his hosts had wiped across his forehead. Salty from the sweat of the morning work before the rain had begun._ _ _ _

____Sweet underneath it all. Like no water he’d ever had. He turned his face farther up and let drops fall straight from the leaves to his tongue._ _ _ _

____Only to choke as it went up his nose as well, sending him to sputtering and shaking his head as hearty chuckles reached him from the porch._ _ _ _

____“There is a saying, little brother, about the folk with no sense to come out of the rain.”_ _ _ _

____“Is there? And what is that?” He had called back to Herst, tall and broad on the porch, baring her teeth in a grin._ _ _ _

____“That the wise should join them in their joy and be reminded of the days before they grew too wise to be foolish.” The dancer had crossed the yard to him in graceful strides as the children who had been listening to her story a few minutes before scrambled to splash in puddles and squirt mud from their cupped palms, with laughter and squeals spilling from their lips._ _ _ _

____The noisy play had thrummed across that sore spot in his mind again and he’d flinched from it, pushed it away to follow Herst and listen to her lesson as the other adults came out to collect their wayward charges._ _ _ _

____Later, rain had been detriment and friend as he ran from Danarius and from the sharp jagged memories of Seheron. It hid his trail, slowed his hunters, and in return made his nights miserable, his armor rust, made his leathers chafe and rot and left him raw. It had hidden game from him on hungry days, made mud that turned his skin soft and blisters putrid until he’d had to spend carefully hoarded coin on potions._ _ _ _

____Fenris had grown wise. He’d let himself forget the taste and the way it had washed his face clean. He’d learned to stay indoors when he could._ _ _ _

____Until an afternoon on haunted Sundermount, following a small Fereldan woman on her way to pay a debt, in order to pay his own. When she turned her face up to the rain as it fell from an astonishingly wide, bleak sky and, as her sister laughed at her for being foolish, grinned as she caught rain on her tongue._ _ _ _

____“Easy drink and a cheap wash, what’s not to like?” And delicately brushed the edge of his foot with a steel booted toe, a smirk on her lips. "Mind the mud, though.“_ _ _ _


End file.
